Summary of the 2008-04-08 Packaging Committee meeting

[Callum Lerwick]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 4:06 PM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Overlapping repos are fundamentally broken, period.
>>
>
> Then why create overlap?


Because moving things into Fedora is a good thing for Fedora.

 We've had long flamewars in the past about how ATrpms freely replaces
>> Fedora packages making an unsupportable mess.
>>
>
> I think ATrpms pre-dates fedora. Freshrpms certainly did.  Do you think you
> can retroactively trademark the package names or something?



>
> > Why are we allowing JPackage to pull the
>
>> same crap?
>>
>> Fedora must not make any consessions to allowing JPackage to maintain
>> overlapping packages in their repos. Because it is brain damaged. Period.
>>
>> This goes for all external repos, not just JPackage.
>>
>
> Allow?  What kind of control do you think you have over other repos that
> were providing packages before fedora existed or the earlier versions of
> RedHat even had public update repositories?  Your choice is to cooperate or
> not.  The impression I got from the earlier discussions was that you refused
> the compromises that would have made consolidating the repositories
> acceptable, forked some of the packages from their pre-existing versions and
> thus made it next to impossible for users to get the rest of the content
> which, for various reasons, you didn't include.  Maybe you see this some
> other way?


Look, I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince you of anything as
you've established yourself as quite the Ferrous Cranius:

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/ferouscranus.htm

The only reason I reply at all is for the edification of everyone else on
the list and anyone googling the archives, to put forth an argument that I
feel has not been given the forceful representation it deserves. With that
in mind:

I am referring specifically to this section of the guidelines exception that
is the subject of this very thread:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/JPackagePolicy#head-cc6af1b19379d1c8881c8636dc085e3bb8c6253f

This section, and really the entire exception as a whole is a weaselly way
of granting JPackage a blessing to duplicate packages available in Fedora
without stating it in explicit terms, which appears to have successfully
slipped it past us all.

This is brain damaged beyond belief. Kill the exception, kill it dead. We
never should have allowed it.

No, we can't force external repos to do anything. But we can refuse to
participate in a process we know is broken and unmaintainable, and explain
to external repos as to why this is so.

When a package moves to Fedora, external repos should drop the package from
their Fedora repos. Anyone concerned with the package's maintanence in
Fedora should become a Fedora maintainer, or maintain an amicable
relationship with the Fedora mainainer. Yes, external repos often support
other distros than Fedora. They can handle that however they like. Its not
our problem. We have EPEL. The repo can port the Fedora package to whatever
other distros they want. Whatever. Its Not Our Problem.

Fedora does not compromise its engineering integrity.

(And before I get accused of not participating in the drafting process: I
was a lot dumber a year ago.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20080515/58a0d83a/attachment.htm>